The source? “Possible artifacts of data bias in the recent global surface warming hiatus,” published this week in Science, by long-time global warming alarmist Tom Karl et al.
Abstract:
Much study has been devoted to the possible causes of an apparent decrease in the upward trend of global surface temperatures since 1998, a phenomenon that has been dubbed the global warming “hiatus.” Here we present an updated global surface temperature analysis that reveals that global trends are higher than reported by the IPCC, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. These results do not support the notion of a “slowdown” in the increase of global surface temperature.
Proper first impression response (though I confess it didn’t dawn on me first thing): “These results do not support …” does not entail that no other results do. I could study the colors of cats’ eyes in my neighborhood and conclude, “These results to not support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature.”
That conclusion would be true. But it would also be irrelevant to the question whether “the pause” is real.
Imagine for a moment that you’re investigating the question, “Is there an elephant in the house?” It’s a 9-room house. Each of eight investigators finds an elephant in a different one of eight rooms. Eight rooms, eight elephants. But one investigator finds no elephant in the bathroom. Would you conclude from his finding, “No elephant in the house”?
So the crucial, first question we should ask is, “Do other results support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature”? And the answer, we shall find, is, “Yes.”
But I’ll go there in a moment. First a quick list of early critiques of Karl et al.’s article. Within a day or two of its appearance, the following critical articles had already appeared:
- The most technical so far (not surprising granted the author, my friend) Ross McKitrick’s “A first look at ‘Possible artifacts of data bias in the recent global surface warming hiatus’ by Karl et al. Science 4 June 2015. Ross begins (perhaps having thought of the point I just made about “These results do not support …”) by listing eight datasets that do “support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature” (HadCRUT [land surface and ocean], HadSST [ocean surface only], NCDC [land surface and ocean], GISS [land surface and ocean], RSS satellite [lower troposphere], UAH satellite [lower troposphere], and, together in the final graph, Ocean heat content 0-2000 meter [Argo floats] and NOAA SST estimates) and provides nice graphs of all seven. Then he points out all kinds of statistical and data-quality problems in the article and concludes:
Are the new K15 adjustments correct? Obviously it is not for me to say – this is something that needs to be debated by specialists in the field. But I make the following observations:
* All the underlying data (NMAT, ship, buoy, etc) have inherent problems and many teams have struggled with how to work with them over the years
* The HadNMAT2 data are sparse and incomplete. K15 take the position that forcing the ship data to line up with this dataset makes them more reliable. This is not a position other teams have adopted, including the group that developed the HadNMAT2 data itself.
* It is very odd that a cooling adjustment to SST records in 1998-2000 should have such a big effect on the global trend, namely wiping out a hiatus that is seen in so many other data sets, especially since other teams have not found reason to make such an adjustment.
* The outlier results in the K15 data might mean everyone else is missing something, or it might simply mean that the new K15 adjustments are invalid.
It will be interesting to watch the specialists in the field sort this question out in the coming months.
- Likely to be the most troubling to the climate alarmist establishment (because she’s the least identified as a “denier”) so far is Judith Curry’s “Has NOAA ‘busted’ the pause in global warming?” She points out that the datasets on which Karl et al. rely have greater uncertainties than others that they purport to correct. She then writes, “My bottom line assessment is this. I think that uncertainties in global surface temperature anomalies is substantially understated. The surface temperature data sets that I have confidence in are the UK group and also Berkeley Earth. This short paper in Science is not adequate to explain and explore the very large changes that have been made to the NOAA data set. The global surface temperature datasets are clearly a moving target. So while I’m sure this latest analysis from NOAA will be regarded as politically useful for the Obama administration, I don’t regard it as a particularly useful contribution to our scientific understanding of what is going on.”
- Patrick Michaels, Richard Lindzen, and Paul C. Knappenberger take on Karl et al. in “@NOAA’s desperate new paper: Is there no global warming ‘hiatus’ after all?” They begin with what ought to be an obvious point but in our innumerate society (and it’s amazing how many scientists, even, are innumerate, not in that they don’t know how to do complicated math but in that they forget basic math principles, like statistical significance levels, especially when forgetting serves their purposes): “The main claim by the authors that they have uncovered a significant recent warming trend is dubious. The significance level they report on their findings (.10) is hardly normative, and the use of it should prompt members of the scientific community to question the reasoning behind the use of such a lax standard.” Then they point out various weaknesses in the reliability of the data on which Karl et al. rely. They conclude, “… even presuming all the adjustments applied by the authors ultimately prove to be accurate, the temperature trend reported during the “hiatus” period (1998-2014), remains significantly below (using Karl et al.’s measure of significance) the mean trend projected by the collection of climate models used in the most recent report from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It is important to recognize that the central issue of human-caused climate change is not a question of whether it is warming or not, but rather a question of how much. And to this relevant question, the answer has been, and remains, that the warming is taking place at a much slower rate than is being projected.”
That’s an important point. The climate models are the only grounds for fearing dangerous manmade warming. The eight more commonly used datasets show that they grossly exaggerate CO2’s warming effect. Karl et al.’s fiddled–er, reconstructed–dataset only shows that they somewhat less grossly exaggerate. That’s not exactly a ringing vindication. It still leaves us with no rational basis to fear dangerous warming, and so no rational basis for policy to mitigate it.
- Bob Tisdale and Anthony Watts take on the new study in the aptly titled “NOAA/NCDC’s new ‘pause-buster’ paper: A laughable attempt to create warming by adjusting past data.” In addition to pointing out all kinds of uncertainties about the datasets on which Karl et al. rely–uncertainties much greater than those that show the “pause”–they point out that Karl et al. choose 1951 to 2012 and 1950 to 1999 as the reference period against which to compare the period of the alleged pause. But of course, there was significant global cooling going on in the 1950s through early 1970s–enough to cause panic about a coming ice age. As Tisdale and Watts say, “If NOAA would like to revise their estimates of future global warming to reflect the more benign warming rate of 0.1 deg C/decade from 1950 to 1999, it would be a big step toward their coming to terms with reality.” Right. That would be essentially cutting IPCC’s estimates of CO2-induced warming by a third, which would put NOAA and Karl et al. solidly in the camp of–horror of horrors!–AGW deniers!
- The Global Warming Policy Foundation chimes in with “Reports of the death of the global warming pause are greatly exaggerated.” (Hat tip to Mark Twain.) The article summarizes “Key pitfalls” of Karl et al.’s paper thus: “The authors have produced adjustments that are at odds with all other surface temperature datasets, as well as those compiled via satellite.” “They do not include any data from the Argo array that is the world’s best coherent data set on ocean temperatures.” “Adjustments are largely to sea surface temperatures (SST) and appear to align ship measurements of SST with night marine air temperature (NMAT) estimates, which have their own data bias problems.” “The extend of [sic; They extend?] the largest SST adjustment made over the hiatus period, supposedly to reflect a continuing change in ship observations (from buckets to engine intake thermometers) is not justified by any evidence as to the magnitude of the appropriate adjustment, which appears to be far smaller.” Then they expand on those in eight numbered points and conclude: “This is a highly speculative and slight paper that produces a statistically marginal result by cherry-picking time intervals, resulting in a global temperature graph that is at odds with those produced by the UK Met Office and NASA. Caution and suitable caveats should be used in using this paper as evidence that the global annual average surface temperature ‘hiatus’ of the past 18 years has been explained.”
- Not to be left out, the inimitable Lord Christopher Monckton weighs in with “Has NOAA/NCDC’s Tom Karl repealed the laws of thermodynamics?” He begins with a humorous rehearsal of a Congressional committee hearing at which both he and Karl were expert witnesses and he had shown that global average temperature had actually been falling for the past eight years, which Karl contested but the data showed true, and that hurricane frequencies hadn’t risen in 100 years, which Karl challenged, whipping out a chart that to his horror showed that Monckton was indeed wrong–they actually hadn’t risen for the last 150 years. The history is entertaining, and I can vouch for its general accuracy–I was there, as another expert witness. Then Monckton zeroes in on the topic suggested by his title. Even assuming Karl et al.’s temperature reconstruction is right, the resulting scenario is that the ocean near-surface temperatures rose at a rate that would require considerable movement of heat into that region from above or below, but neither the troposphere nor the deep ocean showed sufficient warming to be the origin of that migrating heat. Hence, for Karl et al.’s scenario to be accurate, we must assume, as I shall here try to summarize as concisely and simply as I can, that heat radiated, both upward and downward, from cooler to warmer masses, which conflicts with the laws of thermodynamics.
Meanwhile, what seems to me about the most obvious response is this: We should keep comparing apples and apples as much as possible.
The most reliable global temperature data from 1979 to the present come from satellites. They are least subject to local contamination, sample change or inadequacy, and variation in method and instrumentation over time. And they show, as Monckton points out in “El Nino strengthens: the Pause lengthens,” that “For 222 months, since December 1996, there has been no global warming at all (Fig. 1). This month’s RSS temperature – still unaffected by a slowly strengthening el Niño, which will eventually cause temporary warming – passes another six-month milestone, and establishes a new record length for the Pause: 18 years 6 months.”
By the way, keep in mind the psychological effect of the WSJ headline: “Study finds no pause in global warming.” That sounds so conclusive!
But had WSJ reported on the last-cited article, which appeared at essentially the same time as NOAA’s, it could have run the headline “Study finds pause in global warming.”
Indeed, WSJ could have run the two stories exactly parallel to each other on the same day.
No single study settles a matter.
And finding no elephant in the bathroom does not mean there’s none in the living room.
This paper is so far out there that it contradicts the IPCC AR5 (Box 9.2). It says that all the other organisations have misread their thermometers for the last 20 years.
It’s way out there.
I note the Guardian (quite alarmed as media outlets o) has only printed one story on this paper. They aren’t doubling down.
Corrigendum: “quite alarmed as media outlets go”
Just for accuracy, the Guardian actually carried two items. The main article had a couple of thousand comments, with the usual suspects tearing into anyone who dare question the methodology of the paper. The general tenor was of uncritical euphoria that the hiatus dragon has been slain. Typical guardia readership stuff. The other item was a blog column by John Abraham, which is approaching 400 comments in a similar vein to the main article.
In contrast, The Times carried a relatively short column by their Science Editor. Comments in single figures, but all rubbishing the paper.
Correction: over a thousand comments (not ‘a couple of thousand’)
When the Guardian see’s the egg dripping from their faces, you know that the paper is doomed.. Their caution wont last long however, they will be forced to play the game soon by their UN masters.
The Guardian has a new editor which may explain a degree of caution. What is more notable in the Guardian are the readers comments in CiF which have become semi-deranged in their desperation to support the global warming religion, no matter how ludicrous the proposition is.
Some people are like that. Not long ago, a warm-monger was abetting a sexual predator because he once headed the IPCC.
“””””….. * The HadNMAT2 data are sparse and incomplete. K15 take the position that forcing the ship data to line up with this dataset makes them more reliable. …..”””””
“Sparse and incomplete” (data) is a colloquial euphemism for the more scientific terminology; “Fails to conform to the Nyquist criterion for the validity of sampled “data”.
That means, it isn’t “data” at all, it is simply “aliasing noise”, and therefore cannot be processed to recover the original function. OK, so you aren’t interested in recovering the original function, (so why bother taking sparse and incomplete samples of it). Well how do you expect to be able to operate on such samples to obtain any statistically valid output. Such sparse and incomplete data, doesn’t even rise to the level where even as mundane a statistical item, as an average is calculable. It only requires the under-sampling to be “sparse” by a factor of two, for the average to be unrecoverable, as the aliasing noise spectrum folds all the way back to zero frequency. (which is what the average is).
So I put the BS stamp on their “sparse and incomplete ” stabs in the dark.
Playing darts in a bar, will tell them as much as their faux “sparse data”.
MCourtney
You say
Yes, to emphasise your important point and for the benefit of those who do not know, Box 9.2 is on page 769 of Chapter 9 of IPCC the AR5 Working Group 1 (i.e. the most recent IPCC so-called science report) and is here.
It says
GMST trend is global mean surface temperature trend.
A “hiatus” is a stop.
And this from the IPCC that is tasked to provide information supportive of the AGW hypothesis.
Richard
Too many climatologists have become cosmetologists, getting rich by hiding the truth
Amazing, and just in time for the next round of climate “talks”
They reached back into the past to make the pause go away, eg: “We have to find a way to get rid of the Medievel Warm Period”.
It needs to be repeated often: This paper is about establishing a new data product. That is, it is focused solely on the errors and inadequacies baked into the HadNMAT2 data product. And if this paper is held as legitimate, it does not speak to global warming as such: It is a refutation of all previous uses of HadNMAT2. Despite what the authors would like to claim, their paper cannot speak to overall global warming when it is solely and strictly a refutation of — and a creation of a new — single data product amongst many.
Much like the ‘ensemble averages’ of GCMs used by the IPCC, we have an ensemble problem with the data products. They cannot, quite obviously, all be the most accurate. So we’re faced with either refuting all but a single data product or refuting any that are inconsistent with the experimentally demonstrable correctives employed in the Karl paper, or refuting the Karl paper — and the validity of peer review along with it.
If this is unpalatable, and I suggest that it is, then the gold standard in Climate Science is to take an unweighted ensemble average of the data products to produce the data product. And that ensemble average, and all its ranges, is then the only valid input to apply to various GCM runs.
And, of course, it remains that if they can’t get the ensemble average of data products to produce a trend that doesn’t straddle nought, then there is no manner in which to claim that there is any warming at all from within the standard practices — valid or invalid — of Climate Science.
It is pure fraud and they know this.
If the media is looking for short and sweet quotes the one above by Judith Curry is pretty succinct. If the media was not filled with lazy idiots, they might post a quote from a PHD who feels this paper has questionable if any useful scientific value.
Slice and dice it however you desire, it is just more propaganda. The left is great at telling a lie over and over until it becomes the truth and, unfortunately, they have the most megaphones. Then add to this the fact that the average IQ is 100, by definition, and you get what we got.
And worse. Half the people are below average.
“Slice and dice it however you desire, it is just more propaganda.”
An earlier generation used the phrase, “No matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney.”
Dr. Beisner,
Thanks for this posting, I personally need to look at it closer to get the full details. I enjoy many of your articles..
I have read several of the other posts on this subject which you reference..
What I think the skeptics need however is a Management Digest type “story” that can be more easily easily read and understood by a broader audience to make sure the skeptic message gets out. I personally distribute many of the blogs from WUWT to a number of friends and colleagues and I can tell you if the article is too detailed it will be lost even by Engineers who may not take the time to wade through all the details. The management digest is useful in addition to the detailed analysis do so well on WUWT.
We are not going to win the war unless we can boil the message down better. I communicate with an individual who is in the media on TV and he tells me the message needs to be simpler and clear.
Thanks again for your efforts
One problem is that there are so many issues with this paper that it is hard to boil it down.
Well, then, here’s my super-brief reply to Karl et al.:
Proper first impression response : “These results do not support …” does not entail that no other results do.
Imagine for a moment that you’re investigating the question, “Is there an elephant in the house?” It’s a 9-room house. Each of eight investigators finds an elephant in a different one of eight rooms. Eight rooms, eight elephants. But one investigator finds no elephant in the bathroom. Would you conclude from his finding, “No elephant in the house”?
So the crucial, first question we should ask is, “Do other results support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature”? And the answer is, “Yes.”
Then one points to the datasets in the graphs McKitrick provided.
No single study settles a matter.
And finding no elephant in the bathroom does not mean there’s none in the living room.
Oh it’s worse then that. They originally did find an elephant in the 9th room. Only after removing the elephant they proclaimed there were no elephants in the house.
Hey Richard! Actually, they found the elephant. But then, the investigators went back and examined the search results of an earlier searcher, one who had been disqualified after a vision test revealed that he was legally blind; his search (unsurprisingly) had revealed no elephant. Using the disqualified evidence as a guideline, the more accurate reports of elephants were then “adjusted” to remove any sightings.
NOAA is despicable.
In New England, the NOAA created cod crisis was exacerbated by an out of the blue, out of sequence, trawl study that no one expected.
The Enviro infected agency is intent on destroying the nations independent fishermen utilizing bad data, presented by computer models that are the same as the climate models. Junk.
The warming in the Gulf of Maine that peaked in 2012, was never considered in the models, which would have shown redistribution of the iconic stock.
Naturally, enviro kooks have used this bogus info to fuel their anti fishing agenda, while the ENGO infested bureaucracy has used emergency regulations to finish off the New England groundfish fleet.
To read this article about NOAA’s position is not surprising. What is, is how they get away with this.
A Tale of two pictures – NOAA and Enviros have it all wrong on Gulf of Maine Cod!
http://fisherynation.com/34174-2
Two decades ago I went to a American Fisheries Society meeting in Halifax, when the press was pushing overfishing of cod, but there was at least one paper on the current/temperature changes. Every fisheries crash has had significant environmental, usually temperature, changes, which does not necessarily negate the importance of fishing predation.
The fisheries crises go way back. In Texas the sports/commercial fishing resource competition heated up after WWII, leading to 1970s state produced computer models blaming the commercials, resulting in transfers and running off of questioning biologists. In the 1990s I was involved with the “blackened redfish” fiasco in Louisiana, both cases rammed through like Obamacare, in Louisiana more difficult because of a more protective constitution with better biologists. These were deemed old school and behind the times, but one learned modeling, however. In both states the accepted models ignored natural variation, particularly important to the now always named red drum, with good evidence of strong influence from freshwater. The Mississippi River floods of the 1970s produced large year-classes in Louisiana, for example. In a brief stint with the Scientific Committee of the Gulf Fisheries Council I learned about the more sophisticated models, again, in the case of red drum and red snapper, emphasizing fishing effects. Particularly troubling was the Council, probably with difficulty understanding the models, placing their responsibility on the Scientific Committee, who mostly accepted. The bad science argument has always been that we cannot control natural variation, but can catches, justifying ignoring the former.
The fisheries literature is gradually catching up with these problems, including a paper on Louisiana oysters I co-authored (Gulf of Mexico Science, 2011 (1):1-12). It got a response published in the Royal Society (2012 B, 279:3393-3400) calling us, and a few others, “skeptics,” an honor to a scientist, and “…seeking to end the debate…” We are not sure what the debate connection was, since neither the facts nor conclusions were refuted, but it probably has to do with the current interest in using oysters to sequester nitrogen. Like carbon dioxide, nitrogen has been demonized, so stated by a student of the anaerobic areas around the world (Estuaries, 2002, 24(2b):782-796). These facts suggest the same phenomenon as occurring in climate science, and the science of oyster sequestration is naive, to say the least.
Old wooden boats were burned in Scotland to prevent their returning to commercial fishing (Maritime Life and Traditions, no. 7, May, 2000, p. 2 ). The only popular coverage of other viewpoints of the old Gulf situation I know of was an article in Texas Monthly, and a short book, “Wetland Riders. ”
So, they come up with all sorts of ideas to explain the pause, when none pass scrutiny, in desperation, they go back and change the data. So simple, why didn’t someone think of it before……..
Because you have to be desperate.
This is a high risk strategy. The paper admits the science was never settled and even the basic measurements are subjective.
It needs a brave politician to stake their carer on that.
Or a safe one. There are no shortage of them, at least in the US.
I see. There was 18 and a half years worth of data that they claimed was true. Anyone saying the GISS data graph in 2009 was of questionable validity would have been crucified for doing so. Now one paper that did not even use the accepted 5% “p” value routinely used in science, states they were all wrong and the people of the world are suppose to send another $8 billion a year to these pseudooscientists for their bogus research. Sorry, I don’t buy it. This sounds more like the ministry of information in the George Orwell novel “1984” changing history every day to suit Big Brothers’ needs to control the sheeple. It seems satellite data is the most reliable global data. Use of surface data is full of problems, errors, data manipulation, adjustments, and a constant stream of new problems demanding more and more adjustments. if a drug company submitted an NDA to the FDA and then went back to redefine the baseline measurement after the study was completed they would be blackballed by the FDA forever. It is time to blackball NOAA and GISS.
Per IPCC AR5, CO2 added a radiative forcing between 1750 to 2011, 261 years, of about 2 W/m^2. Solar ToA is 340 W/m^2. IPCC says clouds have radiative forcing of -20 W/m^2, ten times the effect of CO2.
1) Mankind’s contribution to atmospheric CO2 between 1750 and 2011 is a wild ass guess.
2) The water vapor cycle runs the climate, not CO2.
3) IPCC’s GCMs don’t work.
How much simpler does it need to get?
But, but, but…… radiative physics!! Oh, the HUMANITY!!!
“1) Mankind’s contribution to atmospheric CO2 between 1750 and 2011 is a wild ass guess.”
But it’s a Really Big Number, and most people are innumerate, so…
IPCC only regard Solar Irradiance and volcanic aerosol to be natural forcing agents. And then states:
“Satellite observations of total solar irradiance (TSI) changes from 1978 to 2011 show that the most recent solar cycle minimum was lower than the prior two. This very likely led to a small negative RF of –0.04 (–0.08 to 0.00) W m–2 between 1986 and 2008.”
and:
“The RF of volcanic aerosols is well understood and is greatest for a short period (~2 years) following volcanic eruptions.”
and:
“There is very high confidence that industrial-era natural forcing is a small fraction of the anthropogenic forcing except for brief periods following large volcanic eruptions.”
Clouds, water vapor or H2O isn´t even regarded as a natural forcing agents. Even if the effect is an order of magnitude greater (20 W/m^2) than the postulated effect of CO2 (2 W/m^2). And no doubt they are natural and the global cloud cover averages around 0.68 … ref Wikipedia.
Ref.: The contribution from Working Group I – to the 5´th assessment report by IPCC
Chapter 8 Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing. Page 662.
As formulated by Roy W. Spencer in “The Global warming blunder “:
“When I asked for the evidence that positive feedbacks really exist in nature, I would be told that satellite observations showed that there was, on average, less cloud cover over the Earth in unusually warm years. Therefore (the argument went) the warming caused less cloud cover, which allowed more sunlight in, which enhanced the warming. This observation was given as an example of positive feedback in nature. But something bothered me about this explanation. How did the researchers know that the warmer temperatures caused a decrease in cloud cover, rather than the decrease in cloud cover causing the warmer temperatures? Well, it turns out they didn´t know.”
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1997/plot/uah/from:1997/trend:1997
Do we tell messrs Spencer and Christy to go hang it out the window?
Before any of you make an attempt at an inane comment, I would like to remind people that the two satellite datasets are not direct records of temperature anomalies. We DO have a meta set of direct recording of the temp anomaly, and it is here (before HadCRUt3 was ended):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1997/plot/wti/from:1997/trend:1997
I say yet again, there is only a single data set showing no warming, RSS. Now, if you want to cling to that set, given that it isn’t a direct recording of temperature, then go ahead. Personally, I see a divergence occuring here on wuwt, those that want to start using the crazy reasoning used on skepticalscience and realclimate, and the rest of us who would rather proceed with caution. Moncky boy’s continuing use of RSS always makes me feel uneasy about his threads here.
Oh, and essential reading, I think:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2011/07/on-the-divergence-between-the-uah-and-rss-global-temperature-records/
Continuing to put faith into something (anything) should be treated with great caution. Life experience seems to show that it can come back and bite you in the bum. If RSS discovers that the flatling is spurious, what would RSS’s followers say then?
Define flat.
To what statistical significance?
With respect to what I wrote above: If any cherry picking of a data product is spurious — then every cherry picking of a data product is spurious. That includes no simply Monckton, but every model run by Climatologists that doesn’t include every data product. This is not simply True if RSS decides to refute its own past construction, but even if it doesn’t. The same holds for every data product in use.
But if every data product is a valid estimation by reasonable people, then it’s not cherry picking but a legitimately bounded difference of scientific opinion. In which case there is neither anything wrong with Monckton’s use or any of the other Climatologists.
In the light of this latter case then, the response to your question is: Make a data product that doesn’t show warming and then cherry pick it. This is wholly legit within the best practices of this scientific discipline — no matter what anyone else may think about the usefulness of it. Especially as it permits any and every data product to be utilized without regard to, well, anything. Any new data product can cite papers that are unpublished, data that is not publicly accessible, destroyed by a fire, eaten by dogs, or what have you.
But regardless of which case is chosen, then any contender — with any ideology — need only demonstrate a data product that is marginally defensible regardless an absence of source data or experimental validation of the adjustments used. Even if that answer is to use raw data without adjustments at all. Or to adjust it up, down, sideways, or into the shape of Thomas Jefferson’s signature.
Unless Climate Science decides on a single data product that is well vetted by argument, experiment, and replication — or just uses the raw data as a ‘push’ — then any and every data product in existence or yet to exist is just as valid. And consistent with Climate Science the refutation or old predictions, data, or models do not change conclusions whatsoever.
So should any skeptic, say Lord Monckton, endeavour to himself to refute a data product, revise it with new an unverified adjustments, that are not experimentally replicable, and are base on citations to unpublished work, to demonstrate anything he wants — then it does not alter any of his part or future statements on the subject. Nor does it invalidate them.
At least, so long as Monckton is making use of the best practices of Climate Science.
Jquip, thank you for your reply. I’m not stating that cherry picking is spurious (ie, fake), I’m saying that RSS’s data set MAY TURN OUT TO BE spurious (fake). I have nothing against cherry picking as long as it’s reasonable. I have no trouble in accepting an 18-year period, none at all, but anything less than 10-12 years is just plain silly – in climate terms. As I say, my beef is in trusting RSS – when it isn’t a direct recording of temperature, and is subject to certain conditions that are rather worrisome. Anthony’s continued allowance of Monckton to use RSS for his articles here is up to him (Anthony), but as I said, this could easily come to bite us all.
Yeh, I understand your concerns. But there’s two problems. The one is that since the raw data is observational rather than experimental — then there’s nothing for it but to trust the raw data. We’ve done the same thing since antiquity with regard to phases of the moon and such not. Though, historically or hysterically, we’ve had a habit of demanding a large number of observers over large periods of time.
But otherwise everyone has to “trust” the data products. It’s not precisely like any of the scientific bodies or institutions have fallen all over themselves getting the raw data out there and accessible to the public. And that is a definitive scare-quote “trust.”
If you wish to be extraordinarily careful of radiosonde data then — both with and without correctives — it establishes a nearly uniform coverage of the globe. That is, there is no ‘manufactured’ data via interpolation. There can and will still be adjusted data, I think we can be sure of that. But it does provide a useful sanity check to values given elsewhere, even if all the satellite data sets are adjusted to oblivion.
Or even if they attempt to embark of the modern shell game to avoid estimating trend directly from the data, but to adjust, infill, and otherwise manufacture counterfactual and fictitious temperatures from which a trend is estimated.
Monckton using best practices of climate science? You are kidding, right? The fake “lord” Monckton is a fraud and because you folks agree with him he’s credible? I can understand why you would find his views attractive but “best practices of Climate Science?” Nope.
No wonder nobody who actually knows about science takes what happens at this site seriously.
I dare you folks to read this carefully:
https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/lord-moncktons-rap-sheet/
@Neal F. Heidler
A factual post, which will be ignored by those who seem not to care about L of M’s dissembling…whether it’s about his own resume, or his pseudo-science.
The new version of UAH also shows no warming.
Hadcrut also showed no warming from 2001 to 2014, which the Met Office has confirmed.
The El Nino in the last year has inevitably left a slight uptick, but the trend is still statistically insignificant
Paul, yes I am in total agreement that it is insignificant statistically, but it’s still a trend up. It isn’t flat, it isn’t down, it is up.
Cooley…that slight ‘up’ – that is also within natural variability. So, the increased CO2 emissions have accounted for…..nothing.
An el nino year does not make a trend, any more than a la nina proves a cooling trend.
This was what the UK Met Office said in 2013:
The start of the current pause is difficult to determine precisely. Although 1998 is often quoted as the start of the current pause, this was an exceptionally warm year because of the largest El Niño in the instrumental record. This was followed by a strong La Niña event and a fall in global surface temperature of around 0.2oC (Figure 1), equivalent in magnitude to the average decadal warming trend in recent decades. It is only really since 2000 that the rise in global surface temperatures has paused.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/q/0/Paper2_recent_pause_in_global_warming.PDF
The pause, at least upto the 2014 el nino , is real and we should not be afraid to keep repeating the fact.
kokoda, I agree entirely. Despite a massive CO2 ‘forcing’ surface temps have hardly risen at all. It makes a nonsense of the idea that CO2 will cause devastation across the globe.
Paul, I love your website (visited it quite a number of times), but what I’m arguing about is the use of RSS. Despite its flaws, I would rather look to HadCRUt4 (actually, I would rather HadCRUt3, but we’ve lost that). I am deeply unhappy about using satellite data when that data could very certainly turn out to be deeply flawed, as it doesn’t directly measure temperature. HadCRUt4 was showing a pause, now it isn’t. Hopefully, a La Nina will represent a return to a ‘pause’. We’ll see.
Are you saying that the statistically insignificant warming is still significant enough to show an upward trend? I thought that was the point of of “significance” in relation to data?
color me confused big jim…
You are applying what Jamie Whyte, in his book by the same name, calls ‘bad thoughts’. It is statistically and scientifically insignificant. But it’s still up (and I’ll come to that in a moment).
Here in Britain, we have some black actors complain that they (black people) are not being represented ‘enough’ on TV and in British films. However, it is a bogus argument. Black people here in Britain make up only 3% of the population. Maybe TV programmes should be peppered with black actors, and they are. Their number is rather insignificant, but they should still be there – but not in the number that these black actors want because then they would be over-represented. Is the cost of repair after a hurricane a ‘significant’ amount? Yes, and no. $1 billion worth of damage is a lot of money. But divided by the population of Florida, it is only $50 each.
Now, back to my first paragraph: No matter what (significance or non-significance), if this green line
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/from:1997/plot/wti/from:1997/trend:1997
turns downward, then there isn’t a single person on here (including me and you) who would argue that it is insignificant. Do you see? Statistically it would be insignificant, but in reality, it would be hugely significant. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
thanks for your response.
I was thinking…..(always trouble)
is it significantly insignificant or insignificantly significant?
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley: “It is statistically and scientifically insignificant. But it’s still up (and I’ll come to that in a moment).”
Breathtaking! That takes disingenuousness to a whole new level.
The linear fit appears to be about 0.1C/decade, well below the IPCC models, with the slope of the linear fit being very sensitive to the start point of the fit. My eyeball’s see a baseline rise to 2002, with a roughly flat line from 2002 to the present, though my eyeballs were trained on broadline NMR relaxation data and not climate data.
One of the things that I have learned from fitting the NMR is that plotting the residual between the fit and the raw data is critical to judging whether the fit makes sense or not. This presupposes that one has a good model of the various component for the time series of temperature data to separate out the effects of the PDO, AMO, etc versus temperature rise from increasing CO2.
This is an important point which needs to be emphasized. At 0.1 C/decade, it will be 100 years before we reach the 2 C warming limit that the IPCC has set. This is hardly catastrophic warming.
I’m going to make [an inane] comment. CO2 is Plant Food.
But you didn’t. You made a 100% factually-correct one.
Yes, ‘inane’ is descriptive, since your comment says nothing, one way or another, about CO2’s role in the greenhouse effect.
The Republican Congress should make NOAA’s entire FY 2016 budget contingent upon the immediate construction of a Soviet style,50 foot tall bronze statue of Trofim Lysenko at the entrance to their Silver Springs campus.
If there are now a greater number of buoy measurements and the buoy measurements are known to be colder than ship measurements then that needs to be accounted for. I don’t find the study controversial. Unless…….
Hey! It maybe warming,
There maybe no pause.
But shorts are the attire .
I prefers, Not furs.
Of course, the abstract and press release could have said:
“Global warming found to be much less than originally feared”
I wonder why they did not say that!
What it’s saying is that the heat was not hiding in the deep ocean after all….
…and NOAA can not measure temperatures in real time, only retroactively
I would be hitting them with that
Karl is a certified gatekeeper of the Cassandra climate alarmists. From his testimony in 2006 to congress here a some money quotes;
“What does the future hold for hurricane activity? In the near term, it is expected that favorable conditions for Atlantic hurricanes will persist for the next decade or so based on previous active periods.” OOOPPS!
That one didn’t work out so well.
“Satellite measurements now confirm a significant increase in atmospheric water vapor consistent with theoretical expectations given the rate of observed atmospheric warming during the past several decades. ”
Oh well he didn’t know NASA’s NVAP study would prove him wrong Vonder Haar et al 2012
This guy talks out both sides of his mouth throughout his testimony. Citing increased drought in the Western US yet acknowledging droughts have lasted for decades in the past and that modern times are wet compared to the not to distant past.
And here is the money quote. “The report does, however, acknowledge there are still uncertainties in the tropics, and this is primarily related to data from weather balloons. There is uncertainty as to whether scientists have been able to adequately adjust for known biases and errors in the data, especially in the tropics where many developing nations struggle to routinely launch weather balloons and process these measurements”
So he now uses a very uncertain SST data set to emphatically state there is NO pause. The man has no conscience.
“Proper first impression response (though I confess it didn’t dawn on me first thing): “These results do not support …” does not entail that no other results do. I could study the colors of cats’ eyes in my neighborhood and conclude, “These results to not support the notion of a ‘slowdown’ in the increase of global surface temperature.”
That conclusion would be true. But it would also be irrelevant to the question whether “the pause” is real.”
#################################
well duh? the title of the article is circumspect. POSSIBLE artifacts. The bottom line is you make aseries of choices about which data to use and how to process it. You present those choices and defend them.
Other experts in the field will take their time to assess the impact of your choices and the soundness of your method. Like all studies it will not be the final word..The onus, however, is on other people to demonstrate what kind of answers you get with other choices, other data, other methods. Criticizing the choices is never enough.To date no one has done demonstrated anything wrong with the Karl approach.
You read Lots of words.. but no demonstration. As for the ” reality” of the pause, it isnt real. The pause results from choices in data, choices in methods. its not “out there” independently existing of our choices.
I’ve never seen a solid defense of it’s existence. I’ll assume it doesn’t exist until its proven otherwise.
If reality exists only as a consequence of the choices we make, then we’re no longer talking about Physics, but Sociology. And while you like the word ‘onus’ the onus is on Karl to demonstrate that his results are consistent with reality. Which is a really odd notion as his results are specifically about constructing reality. Both in the inaccessible present and the inaccessible past.
But consistent with your preferred notions and argumentation: No one has proved that the pause is false. Or even that global warming is true. These are just artifacts of the choices made by others. So I’ll award you points if your professed Skepticism isn’t hypocritical.
As otherwise you’re just a zealot selling your brand of snake-oil for monetary or ideological purposes.
+100
Jquip, reality only exists when you measure it.
I should have added, “apparently”.
Wrong way round, Mosh.
You need to find evidence of a warming trend, not the absence of one.
If the choices are shown to be ill-concieved, then I don’t see why criticizing them is never enough. I think it was Ross Mckitrick who said that experts in the field will judge the validity of the adjustments. He is right. If the adjustments are not valid then the result is not valid. I don’t understand why the lack of showing what results are obtained from different choices renders a criticism irrelevant.
Hi Steven,
For something that doesn’t exist, there sure is a lot of care and effort to get rid of it. Karl’s paper would indicate that there is indeed a ”pause” and has been there up until … eh, this paper adjusted it away. I suppose the big question now is, how valid is the Karl paper? Just how solid is it? Does it actually say more about how unsettled the science is?
It reminds me of the adverts for a ”New and improved” product. To me I always felt that this was admitting how crap the previous product was, though they had no problem trying to flog that up until now. No thanks. I’ll wait till they get it right.
Eamon.
The idea that available data has been interpreted, until now, by AGW alarmists with a cooling (or less warm) bias is laughable!
If there had been any way to interpret data for the past few years as disastrous, we would have been inundated with it.
We all expected this. There is absolutely no way, the Paris circle jerk, could proceed while the world remained within a 18+ year pause. It had to go (for the narrative)… so it did. Just like the MWP and the LIA… they have to go. I just hope it doesn’t drive any realists to violence and extreme activism. Stay cool – my Brothers. GK
Fascism’s last stand!
Cat craking: The AGW crowd lost a long time ago. It ain’t warming or cooling, and the weather is not changing from the normal (normal in human life terms being assessed in the 1000’s of years). So no, you or I or any alarmist or skeptic will not see any significant changes in anything concerning climate.in our lifetimes. Even Mosher, Zeke, Anthony or Steven Goddard, Obama, Blatter, The Pope ect none will experience any change in climate. LOL
taking the world by storm?
I think few ordinary people had any idea of the ‘pause’
most have only noticed the ‘warmest year ever’ headlines
many who see this story may think to themselves ‘I never knew there was even a question’
thus begin to ask more questions
the warmists have bothered to very publicly explain away something that they heretofore vehemently proclaimed nonexistent
seems like a clue
and just when I thought this subject could get no crazier
John. Sounds like the Streisand effect in play here.
yes exactly, thanks, I had not heard of that
Am I missing something?
the warmists have now made ‘pause’ a legit part of the debate
oops…
Anyone who bothers to reply/discuss Anything Mosher writes re climate is an absolute cretino (hink about it).The man is an English major, those are his educational qualifications. (check Internet if you want). It the way he thinks/analyses its obvious to me anyway the man is totally unsuited to research anything related to climate.
And what are your qualifications, granted by an academic board, that establish that you can judge the man on what he is capable or incapable of doing?
His own arguments will either be valid or invalid. Each one to itself.
Dr. Doolittle, I presume?
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell. The sequence of this logic should have been written thus:
“He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future” because first one needs to take power in the present to be able to rewrite history, or in this case climatic records, so that then one would be able to take hold and control the future by continuously changing the past according to the present needs thus controlling the people’s minds and assuring continuance of power over the proles.